


The Morning Lies Heavy on My Father

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Durin Family, Dwarves In Exile, Family Feels, Fluff, Kink Meme, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 15:52:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for the kink meme: "I just want to see the family-side of Thráin and/or Thrór. I'm sure they loved as fiercely as any Durin. I'd love to see something about how proud Thrór is of his son and grandson.</p><p>Bonus if Anon can show something of the family being a family while they begin their exile."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Morning Lies Heavy on My Father

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing and am making no profit from this. The title comes from the Allan Taylor song, "The Morning Lies Heavy on Me." I am gleeful beyond words for the opportunity to write a little bit of Good Daddy!Thráin, not a side of the guy we get to see nearly enough, I think.

All Thorin knew of being King he learned from his grandfather. Thrór, King Under the Mountain, was a just and fair dwarf who never asked from his subjects what he was unwilling to do himself. That included rising early from a bed of hard ground and rocks to seek work to buy their food and drink.  
  
The kings of Dwarves were unlike some kings and nobility to be found among Men who valued leisure as the height of pleasure and the greatest indicator of status. Idleness was not a luxury among dwarrows. Quite the contrary, the inability to work implied infirmity or poverty. Because they did not till the land nor did they raise animals for sale or slaughter, all their work was only useful so long as there was a market for it. And there had been such a dearth of coin during the winter months that poverty and infirmity crept into their band of wanderers until their thin bodies and slack muscles fairly _ached_ for a steady occupation.  
  
When spring came, they found their wares not unwelcome among the Men of Rohan and so set up a temporary settlement on the East borders of that city. The weather was balmy, though summer was yet months off and though the Dwarves were still unaccustomed to dwelling largely out of doors the warmth lifted their spirits even as the sunlight blinded their eyes. Walda, King of Rohan had no quarrel with the dwarf race, sharing with them a passionate hatred of orcs. His troops always had need of farriers who could work quickly and though in the earliest days of their exile the most worthy of their smiths would have chafed at the task of shoeing horses and dismissed it as beneath their abilities; they now knew they could little afford to be so choosy.    
  
Yet after a few weeks of toil there was moaning and grumbling among the smiths; the work paid too little, it was insulting, their forefathers would tear their beards in shame to see them.  
  
“What would shame our fathers more?” Thráin, crown prince whose chains of office were lost when the Mountain fell, asked his wife in the wee small hours before the sun rose. “To see their children shoe a few horses for Men or to see their line end because their sons and daughters won’t bend their stiff necks and feed themselves?”  
  
Freya was returning from the interior of the camp balancing bowls of porridge for her husband, father-in-law and eldest son who were always the first to rise and begin work each day. It was an example, Thrór told Thorin who was always grumpy and bleary-eyed in the morning. If the work was not too lowly for the royal family, it would suit the rest of their people just fine. Anyway, who could respect a king who let his people toil while he slept in?  
  
“Eat,” she said, setting the rough wooden bowl in her husband’s hands. “And no more talk of starving. You’re always ornery before you’ve had your breakfast.”  
  
“You needn’t take it so far,” Thrór remarked, approaching his son and daughter-in-law. His beard, still growing back out after being singed by dragon-fire, was simply braided, as was his hair. Only the quality of the fabric of his tunic and the supple leather of his jerkin marked him out as one of elevated status. “He’s always ornery, whether he’s had breakfast or no.”  
  
Thráin, who’d fortunately taken a mouthful of boiled oats just as his father spoke, was unable to respond right away. “Just you wait ‘til the boy’s up,” he predicted once he’d swallowed. “Then we’ll see who’s the gloomiest soul about.” He rose to rouse his eldest son from slumber, but his wife put a hand on his shoulder and forced him to sit once again.  
  
“I’ll rouse the army,” she said. “You finish up - I still say I’m right and you’re a great deal more cheerful to be around on a full stomach.”

Disappearing into the tent she found all three of her children still fast asleep. Dís was tucked cozily between her brothers, hugging Frerin’s arm tightly while Thorin was curled up on his stomach on her other side, face buried in his arm. Freya recognized that pose; it was the position of a dwarf who was wide awake and fervently desired sleep again.  
  
With a small, lopsided smile, Freya knelt down and poked one of her son’s feet, exposed beneath the blanket he was tangled it. Thorin bolted up with a start, blinking in the darkness and trying to hide a grimace when he saw his mother. “It’s not morning, is it?” he asked quietly. Dís and Frerin snuggled closer together, chilled by the cool air Thorin’s abrupt rising let sneak under the blankets.  
  
“You know it is,” Freya replied. “Up you get. I’ve got your breakfast waiting.”  
  
“Ham?” Thorin asked hopefully.  
  
“Porridge,” his mother raised one pale brow at her eldest’s unseemly groan. “When you find a pig to kill and salt, then you can have all the ham you’d like, my sapphire-eyed bratling. ‘Til then, rise and greet the day - if you don’t hurry, it’ll be _cold_ porridge for you.”  
  
With minimal grumbling, Thorin got out of bed, tucking the blanket tightly around his little sister. Neither she nor Frerin had to get up yet and he would not begrudge them a few minutes more sleep; hopefully their dreams were sweeter than the waking world.  
  
A waking world that was entirely too still and cold for it to be morning. Thorin stumbled over to the place where his father and grandfather were taking their meal, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and wishing there was a fire to warm them. The fuel could not be spared, he knew they could little afford to light one, but he was not so old that he was too mature to wish.

  
“The sleeper has awakened,” Thrór smiled at him and, for the first time in what seemed a very long while, it reached his eyes. His good soul was too much overburdened, first with the dragon sickness, then the attack itself. Thorin told no one that he had to drag his grandfather bodily from the beast, for their King did not have the presence of mind to care tuppence for his own life. Thorin would _never_ find anything good in their exile, but his grandfather seemed easier in his mind than he had been under the mountain. The only thing that haunted his eyes and dimmed his smile was guilt that he had not done more for his people, not the dark and terrible madness of the dragon sickness.  
  
Thorin did not voice any of this, merely grunted something that might have been, “Good morning,” but was too low and slurred to be made out. He sat heavily upon the ground and his father handed him a lukewarm bowl of porridge which he dug into without verbalizing his thanks.  
  
Ordinarily, such behavior would be met with a sharp comment on respect and manners from his father, but Thráin smirked at his wife over his son’s head, a sly look on his face. “What was that you were saying about gloom?”  
  
“I can’t recall,” Freya replied airily, untying her son’s loosened braids and combing his long black hair out so she could re-plait it for the day. The comb was already missing a few prongs, the accoutrements of Men were not built to withstand repeated use by dwarves, but it was cheap and serviceable. Less than a year ago she combed her children’s hair with brushes of gold and silver, but she tried to put the thought out of her mind.  
  
Her eldest son tried to duck away from her hands, but his mother had a firm grip and tugged his head back into place. “I can tend to my own hair, Ama,” Thorin informed her.  
  
“Oh, aye,” she nodded placatingly. “And you’ll fix two braids in before deciding that’s quite enough of that and leave the rest down to trail in the fire. I’ve had enough of the smell of burnt hair to last me a lifetime, thank you.”  
  
Thorin stiffened a little and finished his breakfast in silence, letting his mother gather his hair away from his face as she would. She was a strong dwarrowdam, to speak so freely of their loss when others still could not talk of Erebor without weeping, but sometimes...just sometimes his mother’s strength could be a little too harsh.

When his bowl was empty - Thorin had _just_ enough dignity left to keep from licking it clean - he put his coat on, lifted his hammer and kissed his mother goodbye before he set off to go with his father and grandfather to earn their day’s wages. They managed to leave just before Dís and Frerin woke, which was their plan. There was not time enough for teaching, not yet, so Frerin would be more bother than help at the forge and Dís was too young for an apprenticeship. The dwarflings were always furious when their father, grandfather and brother left without them, but it could not be helped.  
  
 _They will learn to abide_ , Freya said firmly when her father-in-law expressed dismay at upsetting them so. _They have to._  
  
They were fortunate enough to have their own smithy to work in among their own people and for once could labor away from the watchful eyes of Men. Oh, they came by in curious clusters to stare for a few minutes here and there, but they were not working underneath them and that made all the difference. To find their work judged by these tall, weak creatures, so _young_ and unskilled tested the will of even the most patient of their kind.  
  
Fundin, usually as impassive as a block of stone to insult, clenched his jaw so hard Thorin was afraid his teeth would crack when a Man asked him if he was sure he could handle his horse - the creature being so much _bigger_ than him, after all. His father had a mercurial temper, but was usually silent when he was upset. In the last town they worked in, he actually _shouted_ at a Man who questioned his ability to work, given his “infirmity.” By that, he referred to the fact that Thráin lost an eye decades ago in a battle with encroaching Goblins in the Iron Hills.  
  
 _”I’ll wager I could fuller blind with more skill than you can with two working eyes!”_  
  
His father bore the scar upon his face as proudly and boldly as the tattoos that marked him as a warrior of the royal blood. In Erebor there was no need to cover it, dwarves looked at such marks with reverence (and not a little awe, among the young) and took them for what they were: signs of strength, survival and bravery. Men saw them as disfigurements and Thráin took to wearing a patch over the pitted socket when they were among them since it was easier to find work when the mark was covered.  
  
That same patch he removed from a pouch around his waist. “Got to wait ‘til I’m out of your mother’s sight,” he remarked to his son as he shielded the mark from squeamish folk who liked to sing of valor, but could not look it in the face. “She claims I’m handsomer without it.”  
  
Thorin smiled briefly. His face was as yet unmarked by scars or old wounds, very young and dull in comparison to warriors like Thráin and Fundin. “It’s not wise to go against Ama’s wishes,” he observed sagely.  
  
Thrór chuckled and nodded in agreement. “Aye, that’s wisdom for the ages,” he said. Very recently, when he’d been poorly in mind the two of them nearly came to blows over some stones that Freya traded to for meat and ale for the camp. Now Thrór could hardly believe his conduct, but at the time it seemed essential that his daughter-in-law keep her jewels, never mind if some went to bed hungry later.  
  
It was because they were emeralds, he rationalized when all was said and done. Emeralds were a particular favorite of his Sigdís and a powerful reminder of she whom he had lost. She used to wear them in her hair and they would shimmer in her long locks, black as a raven’s wing. Laid in a circlet of gold and surrounded by diamonds, they were only visible if you got close.  
  
The loss of his wife was a dull, but ever-present ache. A wound that was closing slowly and would never heal properly. If the Men wanted to speak of disfigurement and infirmity, they would need to look deeper than the faces of the dwarves in their midst for they carried their worst wounds on the hearts and in their souls. Rage, sorrow and grief cut deeper than knives and severed more devastatingly than axes and swords.

Their people were their most valuable treasures, he had to remind himself. Some of the fog that clouded his mind lifted when he thought of them, most especially his family. His wife was the diamond in his treasure house and his grandchildren were as valuable as the veins of mithril beneath Khazad-dûm. Remember the ancient sayings, _Family and halls above all else._ They had no halls now, no treasure; there was only family.  
  
The dark little smithy was nothing like the great forges they were accustomed too at home, but it was suitable enough for a few smiths. “Get the fire going, my boy,” Thrór said, laying a hand on Thorin’s shoulder briefly before the lad nodded and moved away to obey.  
  
Thráin lifted the awning into place and watched his son stoke the fire with a pang of longing in his chest. At home the fires would have been lit well before they came to do their work and fed all day by the younger apprentices. At this early hour he would have been abed with his wife or else putting on the vestments of the court, reviewing treaties and legal documents while Halldóra, their best scribe, chattered unceasingly about the details involved in each scroll before his eyes. All that was gone now. But not lost forever, he reflected as he saw his son rise, full-grown and strong, watching the fire intently.  
  
“You’re a good lad,” Thráin said gruffly, feeling his insides twist uncomfortably as Thorin only _just_ kept himself from looking over his shoulder to see if his father was addressing someone else. Behind his grandson, Thrór smiled proudly; it was rare that his son was so complimentary of anyone and Thorin deserved nothing but praise, being such a good, dutiful boy. Of course, Thráin could hardly let the moment end tenderly; it was not his way. “Even if you are damned bloody-minded before breakfast.”  
  
“He gets that from you,” Thrór said, testing the heat of the fire with a bare hand. Not nearly hot enough, but they had time yet. “Lucky for him he’s got my charm to balance that out.”  
  
“He doesn’t get the charm from you,” his son objected. “Gets that from his mother.”  
  
“And the  good looks?”  
  
“Gets those from _my_ mother.”  
  
And even though his good points were being illuminated only as counterpoints in a friendly argument between father and son, Thorin could not help feel somewhat lighter in spirit to hear them. Hanging back near the fire, he memorized the sound of his grandfather’s laugh and his father’s rarely seen crooked smile. It was a moment of tranquility, but the young dwarf knew it was only a moment. To be savored and stored up and remembered when the days grew dark and the world was once again hostile.  
  
The task of holding together their impoverished, angry, frightened kith and kin was daunting and weighed heavily on the King and his heir apparent, but as they waited for the sun to rise and the fire to grow hot they were only father and son, grandfather and father. Just a family, at the beginning of the day.


End file.
